Brazilian both, remains of the 40's generation.
Brazilian governament started program of translation of brazilian authors outside, apparently the BRICKS raised some interest on brazilian Culture and we are the country of Frankfurt fair 2014. Not sure how this will go.
Found from Manoel de Barros :
http://www.amazon.com/Birds-Demoliti...7958168&sr=1-1
Not sure about the translation, of course. He is a very musical poet, in the lines of portuguese lyrical tradition. Sounds simple, is bucolic, but manages very melodic lines, those people go quoting easily.
Calling Ariano Suassuna a poet was a stretch from my part, he is more well know for his plays (with the traditional Auto form). A very comical old man, he does the link with popular - erudite from brazilian northwest. I would say, his use of popular language make him hard to translate.
6. Your favorite non-Anglo poem
Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías by Lorca
Yes... I was considering Lorca's poem as well.
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
Your favorite 20th century poet
A lot to choose from here: Dylan Thomas, Wallace Stevens, and Yeats are all poets that I read often. But if the idea here is "favorite", I'd give Dylan Thomas the top spot, though I think the other two are better poets. Thomas's wordplay, Romantic sentiment, and natural settings just strike a chord with me.
Your favorite 20th century poem
I'll stick with Thomas and go with his "Poem in October", which I've read/listened-to so often that I have nearly memorized it. Others that I enjoy are Yeats' "Brown Penny" and "Second Coming", Stevens's "Idea of Order at Key West". . . . Oh, I also like Robert Lowell's "Epilogue" quite a bit.
Your favorite living poet
My preference for American writers will really show through here. I read a lot (well, compared to most) of contemporary poets: Mary Oliver, Billy Collins, Gary Snyder, Wendel Berry, and Jim Harrison are the ones that I have read either most often or most recently. Of these, I gotta go with Gary Snyder. I dig the hippie/spiritual/goofy thing that he does.
Your favorite poem by a living poet
Changes often. But as of my writing this I'll go with "Wild Geese" by Wendell Berry. Here's a like to it: http://writersalmanac.publicradio.or...ate=2003/08/05
Your favorite non-Anglo poet
Virgil -- I used to be able to read Latin, so I read the Aeneid in the original. But, sadly, I let that second language go unpracticed for far too long and am now pretty pathetic at it.
Your favorite non-Anglo poem
Aeneid
Last edited by The Comedian; 05-25-2012 at 12:41 PM.
“Oh crap”
-- Hellboy
1. Your favorite 20th century poet
I'd have to choose William Butler Yeats
2. Your favorite 20th century poem
I'm not sure, probably "The Circus Animals Desertion" by Yeats
3. Your favorite living poet
I don't really read contemporary poets so I can't name a good choice
4. Your favorite poem by a living poet
N/A
5. Your favorite non-Anglo poet
Homer
6. Your favorite non-Anglo poem
The Iliad
Last edited by Venerable Bede; 05-25-2012 at 06:13 PM.
“Yesterday's rose endures in its name, we hold empty names.”
― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose
The Lost Child
by Sitor Situmorang (Indonesian Poet)
In the midday heat
a speck appears on the lake.
The anxious mother runs down to the beach
to welcome her long-awaited child.
The boat takes shape.
As she stares her tears flow -
the child has come back from his journeying.
The moment he sets foot, mother embraces him.
Father sits at the centre of the house
as if he couldn't care less.
The child is crestfallen at his mother's side -
but men know to restrain their feelings.
The child sits down, is told to talk,
a chicken is slaughtered, rice cooks.
The whole village is asking,
'Are you married, any children?'
The lost child has come back
but now he knows no-one.
How many harvests have been and gone?
What has happened?
The whole village is asking,
'Any children, how many?'
The lost child is silent -
He has questions of his own.
At dusk after the meal
his mother moves closer, she wants him to speak.
The child stares, the mother asks
if it is cold in Europe.
The child is silent, remembering forgotten things -
the cold of Europe, the seasons of its cities.
His mother is quiet, has ceased talking -
no resentment, only joy.
Night has come, mother is asleep,
father has been snoring some time.
The waves swish on the beach.
They know the child has not returned.
I'm nobody, who are you?
Are you nobody too?
There's a pair of us, don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know!
How dreary to be somebody!
"So-Crates: The only true wisdom consists in knowing that you know nothing." "That's us, dude!"- Bill and Ted
"This ain't over."- Charles Bronson
Feed the Hungry!
I was gonna say, I coulda swore I saw mortal say his favorite poem was The Divine Comedy prior to this thread.
Same here--it was the first poem I ever read where I thought, "Wow, that was awesome . . . what the hell did I just read?" So I went back and read it again . . . and again and again. It's the mystery of the poem, along with the imagery. I can't go back and give one book that got me into reading, but I always know Yeats's poem was where I really got what poetry could do.
Last edited by Mutatis-Mutandis; 05-26-2012 at 03:20 AM.
I suspect this thread has come about because of my recent comments in another one. If that is not, in fact, the case, then please excuse me for what I'm about to say.
I think it is a gross misrepresentation to suggest that I said "[citing] an older poem or poet as [one's] favorite [means one is] either clueless or dismissive of anything more contemporary." I think the errors in your assumption are many.
First, my interest in the unawareness of modern literature, owed not primarily to the discussion of Canonical poets, but rather to the dearth of discussion about modern ones. It's not that one mentions Shakespeare that I find so telling, but rather that one does not mention someone more modern. I would also point out that this discussion largely concerned modern poetic technique, which would, presumably, entail a discussion of modern poets. When pressed on the issue in the other thread, someone provided a list of the so-called modern poets mentioned in the thread, which turned out to be a list of mostly dead poets including people like Tennyson.
Also, I think you misidentify or misrepresent the underlying issue, which was not whether Shakespeare might be applicable but whether the point of devoting oneself to such aged varieties of literature was, much as I see this point of this thread, simply a means of demonstrating publicly one's sophistication. After all, this thread, like the other one, seems mostly a vehicle to "prove them wrong," as you say, while simultaneously excusing everyone from a substantive conversation of the pertinent issues. I can't count the number of threads I've seen on this forum where one is invited to list one's favorite novels, favorite lines or favorite writers, and these sorts of threads constitute a sort of non-conversation in which the responses are mostly uniform and differ only insofar as to how one fills in the blanks.
Today, a love for Shakespeare is seldom automatic, as Shakespeare presents great difficulties of language for any modern reader. This is to say that one must LEARN to love Shakespeare, with concordance and lexicon in hand. Bukowski, on the other hand, is immediately accessible to any modern reader, so I find any protestations to love his work more plausible for a modern reader. I suppose I am saying that love of Shakespeare results most often from a formal education in Shakespeare or a desire to pretend that one has had such an education. There are no such impediments to reading Bukowski; moreover, what Bukowski says is more immediate to our time and consequently, more relevant--even if one can rightly say that Shakespeare is universal. But in the thread in question the person who brought up Bukowski was instantly rebuked for her presumably "bad" taste.
Imagine an interview with Elvis in which all he talked about were Mozart and Bach. Could sense be made of such an interview? If all Elvis had been concerned with were, in fact, Mozart and Bach, I can't imagine we'd even know who he was.
But those threads often lead to conversations about the writers or works mentioned. Look at this thread, it's only on the second page and we've already seen a couple of mini-interactions between posters.
Edna St. Vincent Millay1. Your favorite 20th century poet
I, being born a woman and distressed2. Your favorite 20th century poem
By all the needs and notions of my kind,
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
To bear your body's weight upon my breast:
So subtly is the fume of life designed,
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
And leave me once again undone, possessed.
Think not for this, however, the poor treason
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,
I shall remember you with love, or season
My scorn wtih pity, -- let me make it plain:
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again.
Leonard Cohen3. Your favorite living poet
I long to hold some lady4. Your favorite poem by a living poet
For my love is far away,
And will not come tomorrow
And was not here today.
There is no flesh so perfect
As on my lady's bone,
And yet it seems so distant
When I am all alone:
As though she were a masterpiece
In some castled town,
That pilgrims come to visit
And priests to copy down.
Alas, I cannot travel
To a love I have so deep
Or sleep too close beside
A love I want to keep.
But I long to hold some lady,
For flesh is warm and sweet.
Cold skeletons go marching
Each night beside my feet.
Rimbaud.5. Your favorite non-Anglo poet
This is my favorite translation of Ophelia but I can't find it online, so I had to type it out from one of my books last year:6. Your favorite non-Anglo poem
I
Where the stars sleep in the calm black stream,
Like some great lily, pale Ophelia floats,
Slowly floats, wound in her veils like a dream.
... -Half heard in the woods, halloos from distant throats.
A thousand years has sad Ophelia gone,
Glimmering on the water, a phantom fair.
A thousand years her sad, distracted song
Has waked the answering evening air.
The wind kisses her breasts and shakes
Her long veils lying softly on the stream;
The shivering willows weep upon her cheeks;
Across her dreaming brows the brushes lean.
The wrinkled water lilies round her sigh:
And once she wakes a nest of sleeping things
And hears the tiny sound of frightened wings;
Mysterious music falls from the starry sky.
II
O pale Ophelia, beautiful as snow!
Yes, die, child, die, and drift away to sea.
For from the peaks of Norway cold winds blow
And whisper low of bitter liberty.
For a breath that moved your long heavy hair
Brought strange sounds to your wandering thoughts;
Your heart heard Nature singing everywhere,
In the sighs of trees and the whispering of night.
For the voice of the seas, endless and immense,
Breaks your young breast, too human and too sweet;
For on an April morning a poor young prince,
Poor lunatic, sat wordless at your feet.
Sky! Love! Liberty! What a dream, poor young
Thing! You sank before him, snow before fire,
Your own great vision strangling your tongue,
Infinity flaring in your blue eye!
III
And the poet says that by the starlight you came
To pick the flowers that you loved so much, at night,
And he saw, wound in her veils like a dream,
Like some great lily, pale Ophelia float.
Last edited by JuniperWoolf; 05-26-2012 at 09:27 AM.
__________________
"Personal note: When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun. So once when I was six, I did. At first the brightness was overwhelming, but I had seen that before. I kept looking, forcing myself not to blink, and then the brightness began to dissolve. My pupils shrunk to pinholes and everything came into focus and for a moment I understood. The doctors didn't know if my eyes would ever heal."
-Pi
Hey, you insinuated that certain people knew nothing of poets who wrote within the last century, and I simply pointed out that plenty of authors who have were mentioned. I never said they were modern, I only listed poets according to your stipulation. Now who's being misrepresentative?
And, for god's sake man, I already admitted Tennyson was mistakenly added to the list. What, do you take some sort of petty pleasure in pointing out a simple mistake even after their person admitted he was wrong?
1. Conversations often evolve from these non-conversations.I can't count the number of threads I've seen on this forum where one is invited to list one's favorite novels, favorite lines or favorite writers, and these sorts of threads constitute a sort of non-conversation in which the responses are mostly uniform and differ only insofar as to how one fills in the blanks.
2. Just so you know, there's this little button you can click that says "New Thread," and then you can start whatever conversation you wish. It's really cool!
I've been taught a ton of Shakespeare, even took a class on him. Hell, I've taught Shakespeare, and I still can't stand him. I've tried really hard. I'm sure it's partly due to me not particularly liking reading drama, but I don't like his sonnets, either. I get his genius and think he deserves his spot in history, but I just don't dig his language.
Today, a love for Shakespeare is seldom automatic, as Shakespeare presents great difficulties of language for any modern reader. This is to say that one must LEARN to love Shakespeare, with concordance and lexicon in hand. Bukowski, on the other hand, is immediately accessible to any modern reader, so I find any protestations to love his work more plausible for a modern reader. I suppose I am saying that love of Shakespeare results most often from a formal education in Shakespeare or a desire to pretend that one has had such an education.
I'm not really sure how that's relevant, just felt like throwing it in there.
Last edited by Mutatis-Mutandis; 05-26-2012 at 03:59 PM.
The "last century" was an arbitrary hyperbole you chose to interpret literally, something I find prevalent among the younger generations. I wasn't trying to misrepresent the conversation; you tried to dispute a point I wasn't really making. I mean, surely you understand that sort of idiomatic expression.
I assure you that had I wanted to shame you, I would have named you. Mentioning Tennyson did sort of prove my point, by the way. Yeats wasn't much better (he's been dead almost eighty years).
In the same conversation, just before you provided your list, you seemed to purposely misconstrue what I had said by cutting the quote short.
You quoted me as follows:
You replied:Should a writer be familiar with his predecessors? Of course.
I replied by pointing out that what I was saying was entirely different and that this was clear if one simply kept reading.This is (and the rest of your post, except the little rant about us discussions music, which was a sidetrack discussion in the first place) pretty much what a lot of us have been saying.
Consider:
Of course, when I replied I actually said the following:Should a writer be familiar with his predecessors? Of course. But he has a more immediate need to be familiar with his immediate predecessors. He isn't concerned with an academic approach to the Canon, but rather his immediate cultural antecedents.
You replied to this with your list. Now it seems to me that you never really addressed the disparity I was pointing out. You, yourself, were discussing Nirvana, and yet when you tried to rebut my point, you provided a list with Yeats and Tennyson. It seems as though you're trying to just argue with me without even considering what I'm truly trying to say. I mean, can you really claim that Yeats is your "immediate cultural antecedent," which was my point?It's unfortunate that you cut the quote off where you did since the following sentence expresses something very different from what everyone else has been saying. My point was that, yes, artists should acquaint themselves with their predecessors, but they should acquaint themselves with more culturally relevant predecessors. You know, someone who has lived in the last century--sort of like how you guys relate to music.
My guess is that you're doing this because the point is perhaps plain and true, and so perhaps you are pursuing a fairly legalistic defense in order to avoid the truth. I mean, for Chrissake, in this very thread in which people have been tasked with demonstrating their appreciation for modern poetry, we're back to talking about Homer and Virgil! And several persons have confessed to not really being aware of modern poetry, which was precisely my point.
I suspect that most people only interact with poetry insofar as education requires it. I suspect people with no real interest in poetry are acquainted only with the stuff in the Norton anthologies. Surely, persons who have an extra-academic interest in poetry would discuss, I don't know, the last poem they saw in this or that journal, the last edition of Best American, a reading given by Billy Collins--something that demonstrates a genuine interest, rather than simply hopping on a bandwagon of sophistication.
Surely, you can understand why someone trying to be a poet TODAY should probably concern himself with poetry being written TODAY (by which I do not literally mean this very day, in case you are preparing another list). And surely, we can agree that the thread in question dealt with how people become poets, right?
Last edited by stuntpickle; 05-26-2012 at 05:20 PM.
Is "Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias" a queer piece of literature?
"You laugh at me because I'm different, I laugh at you because you're all the same."
--Jonathan Davis
I believe you do have a point here and I have to admit that I am guilty of this as well. I never was in to poetry until the first years of university and there the only exposure was to the poets of the canon. While I do read some poetry for a pastime as well, I usually gravitate towards prose works. And when I do read poetry it's generally something old like Petrarch's works. I think one of the problems is that current poetry slips under the radar and doesn't demand the same attention and respect that a novel does. Thus, I don't feel compelled to read a new poem in the same way that I do to read the newest winner of the Pullitzer or Man Booker prizes.I suspect that most people only interact with poetry insofar as education requires it. I suspect people with no real interest in poetry are acquainted only with the stuff in the Norton anthologies. Surely, persons who have an extra-academic interest in poetry would discuss, I don't know, the last poem they saw in this or that journal, the last edition of Best American, a reading given by Billy Collins--something that demonstrates a genuine interest, rather than simply hopping on a bandwagon of sophistication.
“Yesterday's rose endures in its name, we hold empty names.”
― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose